


Somewhere Very Near

by ZoeBug



Series: JeanMarco Week 2015 [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fate & Destiny, Grief/Mourning, JeanMarco Week, M/M, Reincarnation, Star-crossed, Supernatural Elements, idk this is just a really strange fic and there aren't tags for it help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 18:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The writing on the wall:</em> An idiom meaning a clear indication or premonition.<br/>Especially of disaster.</p><p>-- </p><p>This is impossible. </p><p>Jean doesn't believe in things like ghosts or the paranormal or anything of the sort.</p><p>This is <em>impossible.</em></p><p>But the paint that comes seeping through the wall a moment later, bright and wet and dizzying, is as real as anything he's ever seen.</p><p><em>Hello?</em>  The wall reads. <em>Is someone there?</em></p><p>--</p><p>Written for JeanMarco Week 2015 - Day 2: Paint</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere Very Near

**Author's Note:**

> Written for JeanMarco Week 2015 - Day 2: Paint
> 
> This fic turned out so out there, man, idk I conceived of and wrote the majority of this during periods of midnight to 4am so forgive me.  
> Enjoy some really strange angst!

_Death is nothing at all._  
_It does not count._  
_I have only slipped away into the next room._  
_Nothing has happened._

  
_Everything remains exactly as it was._  
_I am I, and you are you,_  
_and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged._  
_Whatever we were to each other, that we are still._

"Death is Nothing At All" by: Henry Scott Holland

 

* * *

 

  
The people at his new school are just trying to pull a fast one on him. Rile him up since he's the new kid and all that.

At least, that's what Jean passes it off as the first time someone tells him he hopes Jean likes horror movies.

When Jean raises one eyebrow at him the guy informs him he'll have to, seeing as how the house Jean and his mother moved into early that week is haunted and all.

Jean laughs―albeit a bit nervously―and scoffs, "Good one," before trying to remember which way he turns at the end of the hallway to get to his science class.

But it doesn't end there.

"Hey, aren't you the one who moved into the old house down at the end of Trost Ave?"

It's the short bald guy who sits next to him in English and won't stop fidgeting with pencils and notebook spirals and the arms of his glasses. The classroom is abuzz with the chatter and zippers of backpacks that fill the last few minutes before the end of the period.

"Uhm, yeah."

"Is it- I mean, have you noticed anything?" The guys asks, bouncing his leg.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, everybody knows that house is haunted, right?" Gauging Jean's blank expression, the guy's excited interest morphs into an expression of cautious concern. "...Hasn't anybody told you?"

This is getting ridiculous. Jean rolls his eyes and just turns back to face the front of the classroom.

"No, really!" The boy beside him insists, sliding his chair a little closer to Jean with a soft screech. "No one told you before you moved in? You've been living there for- how long now?"

"Two weeks." Jean supplies boredly.

" _Two weeks_?!" The guy exclaims. "Have you seen it yet, then?" He sounds excited and intrigued yet also terrified.

Jean turns in his chair to face the guy, leveling him with his best _done-with-this-shit_ glare.

"Seen what?"

The boy's eyes widen comically beneath his thick frames.

"The writing." He glances away, licking his lips before returning his gaze to Jean's face. "The paint that just... _appears_ on the wall."

Jean swallows.

"What the hell are you on about?"

"They say it just _bleeds_ through the wall in the upstairs bedroom sometimes." The guy continues, voice hushed, eyes darting around as he speaks. "Phrases or sentences or sometimes just single words. In paint so fresh it drips down the wall afterwards. Then it just, like, disappears!" Some knot in Jean's stomach tightens. "People say it's the ghost of some kid who died up there a while back."

The bell rings, shrill and abrupt and it startles Jean away from the kid's earnest expression.

"That's stupid." Is all he says as he gets up from his seat with a loud scrape and stalks out into the hallway.

 

 

  
"People at school keep saying the house is haunted."

Across the kitchen, Jean's mother, Marie, stops humming and the potato peeler in her hand stills as she laughs.

"That's silly."

"I know." Jean snorts and picks up his dishrag again, running it along the countertops.

"I bet they're just trying to tease you since you're new." Marie supplies kindly. "Kids can be mean. Hopefully they'll get bored of it soon and leave you alone. If you need any help with it, pumpkin, let me know, ok?"

"Yeah."

When she mutters softly to herself a short while later―"The place _was_ surprisingly cheap..."―he pretends he doesn't hear her.

 

 

  
For the next few weeks, he adamantly dismisses all inquiries, assumptions, and even _mentions_ concerning his new house.

Soon enough he learns the walk to school by heart, memorizes the layout of the school, and is almost able to pronounce the strange nearby town's name without pausing halfway through.

But that doesn't keep him from lying awake at night in his new bedroom at the top of the stairs and staring at the darkened walls.

He and his mother have lived in the old house at the end of Trost Ave for almost a month when he first sees it.

It's nearly 3AM according to his alarm clock and he's been awake, sullenly tossing and turning for hours. He's tired and cranky and now there's the sharp smell of paint and he just wants to go to sleep-

Wait. The smell of paint?

Jean bolts upright in his bed, suddenly wide awake. His eyes dart frantically around the room, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

He can _smell_ it still. Like walking into a freshly painted room. Metallic and sharp and heady.

And then there―even in the darkness of his bedroom, he sees it. Words. Appearing like they're seeping through the wall itself.

 

> _"One brief moment and all will be as it was before."_

 

Jean's hands are shaking where they grip the blanket. He stares, reading the line over and over, the smell of paint so overwhelming he feels dizzy and then...

Just as the "e" begins to drip, the words seep back into the wall and vanish as if they'd never been there at all.

 

 

   
He convinces himself he must have been dreaming. That's all it could have been, right? Or his eyes playing tricks on him in the darkness of yet-unfamiliar room. Or the stress and exhaustion of the move.

Or all this _damn_ talk about haunting and walls and paint worming its way into his subconscious.

That strange, _impossible_ disappearing painted phrase could have been any number of things, he reasons. Besides real, of course.

Bored suburban kids with nothing better to do than scare the new kid with hokey urban legends.

He's decides gonna have to chew out Connie―which is apparently the name of his Biology class table-mate―about this on Monday.

 

 

  
He doesn't get a chance to, as it turns out.

Because it's Saturday night when words come bleeding through his bedroom wall again like something straight out of a horror movie.

 

> _"Everything remains exactly as it was."_

 

"No, no, no, no..." Jean finds himself muttering, shaking his head while he stares at the words. "This can't be real, this can't-"

But he's _definitely_ awake and there are _definitely_ painted words on his wall that are starting to drip.

And just as before, the words fade back into the boring, off-white paint of his bedroom wall and everything is still.

"H-hello?" He calls out softly. His voice cracks halfway through so he clears his throat and tries again. "Hello?"

Nothing. Once again, nothing.

The room is silent and still and the smell of fresh paint is quickly fading.

 

 

  
"I'm going into town to get groceries tomorrow, so if you need anything writ- _Jean_ , goodness gracious, you look awful."

Marie almost drops her coffee mug when she turns to see him slouching into the kitchen the next morning.

"Yeah, rough night. Couldn't sleep." Jean grumbles and tiredly beelines for the coffee pot.

"Are you okay, sugarplum? If anything's wrong, you can always tell me." Jean just blinks slowly as he stirs a spoonful of creamer into his mug. His mother sighs. "I know the move has been hard on you, muffin. But if there's anything I can do, I want to be there for you."

Jean feels a hand slide onto his shoulder and squeeze gently.

"Thanks, Mom." Jean says tiredly.

"I mean it. I love you to death, kiddo. Nothing I wouldn't do for you."

Jean sighs and turns around to face her but keeps his eyes on his coffee.

"I dunno, people just keep telling me someone died here. I think it's giving me nightmares or something."

Marie's eyebrows knit together and she gives him a concerned and considering look.

"I'm sorry, honey. I can ask the realtors we bought the place from about it if it'll help ease your mind. And you're more than welcome to use my sleeping aids if you're having trouble again tonight. They're over the counter so they're safe for you."

Jean swallows thickly.

"Thanks, Mom. Really."

She steps forward and wraps Jean in a hug, rubbing her hand along his back.

"Anything for you, pumpkin."

 

 

   
The words don't show up again that night. Or the next.

Not that Jean sticks around the land of consciousness long enough to find out, thanks to his mother's sleep aids. He'd briefly considered crashing on the couch but some petulant, stubborn part of him was determined not to be horned out of his own room by some stupid dreams.

After week of smooth, dry bedroom walls and Jeans novelty as the new kid wearing off even further, he's convinced himself the whole thing was a stress-induced nightmare.

But he arrives home Friday afternoon after school to find his mother bent over the kitchen table and chewing her lip nervously. She's riffling through a scattering of what look like newspaper clippings in manila folders and grainy web page articles printed out on office paper.

The door swings shut behind him before Jean gets a chance to softly close it and the subsequent _bang!_ makes Marie jump.

She presses a hand to her chest, her eyes wide.

"Oh, Jean, you're home!"

"Mhm." Jean dumps his backpack into a chair and comes over to study the papers on the table. "What's all this?"

"Oh, uh..." Marie hesitates as her eyes dart back and forth between Jean and the papers. "Well, I asked the realtor's office, like I said, and... well..." She gestures to the old newspaper clippings. "They did apologize for not telling us and everything and gave me a date if I wanted to look into it more..."

"So, wait." Jean starts his throat suddenly feeling tighter. "Someone _did_ die here?"

"I went down to the library after work today and this was all they had. It wasn't a violent death or anything so there wasn't a big to-do about it." She pauses. "Jean, baby, are you okay?"

"Yeah," Jean croaks out, reading over the headlines.

 

_Local Rose Boy, 17, Dies Suddenly of Unknown Heart Condition_

 

_Town Gathers for Memorial Service of High School Student_

 

"Yeah, I'm fine. When did this happen?"

"Um, 1973, apparently." Marie replies softly.

"In my bedroom?" Jean doesn't move his gaze from a picture beside an article. A beaming brunette boy kneeling beside a golden retriever in someone's backyard, yellowed by newsprint and age.

"It doesn't say anywhere in the reports, sugarplum." Marie offers softly. "But if it's still getting to you, we can switch rooms."

"N-no, no." Jean hastily replies, tearing his eyes away, "It's fine. So what? The dead are dead and there's nothing more to it. It's a stupid reason to be scared of a room."

Turning and stalking off into the den, he stoops to fire up his game console despite his mother's hasty, "Jean, wait-!" Trying let the staccato of virtual machine guns and the gentle buzz of the controller in his hands drown out the images of faded smiles, he plays until darkness falls outside the living room windows.

He tells himself he's just imagining the sharp smell of paint burning the back of his throat.

 

 

   
The loud revving engine of a car racing by on the road outside his window jerks Jean from a peaceful sleep. Startled into consciousness, his limbs prickling with adrenaline, he sits up and rubs his eyes.

It's still dark out and the alarm clock on his bedside table tells him he still has hours until the sun rises.

Of course, because he can't help it, his eyes slide to the wall across from his bed.

Aside from the distant shrill car engine rattling further into the distance, everything is quiet and still.

He squints distrustfully at the wall. Like an animal eyeing something as to assess whether or not it's a danger before approaching.

"You haunted, or what?" Jean demands, whisper barely verbalized in the too quiet room.

 

> _"There is absolute and unbroken continuity._
> 
> _What is this death but a negligible accident?"_

 

"You have _got_ to be kidding me."

Terrified but also _fucking exasperated_ , Jean flings off his covers and stalks toward the wall and words still shining and wet with an angry sort of terror.

With a shaking hand, Jean raises his fingertips to brush into the broad stroke of the "W" and his fingers come away dotted with wet paint. He stares at them incredulously, rubbing them together, smearing the paint around on his skin.

It's as real as anything.

"What the _hell_?"

But when Jean looks up... the words are gone.

Shocked, he raises his hand once more to run it along the now dry and undisturbed wall of his bedroom, the wet paint on his fingers accidentally smearing back onto the surface.

Jean's incredulity meter is pretty much already maxing out, but when he sees the smears of paint―the ones he'd marked onto the wall with paint that had come out of nowhere―seep into the wall just as the words had come out before, he almost loses it.

He has to take a moment to control his breathing after realizing it was tipping dangerously near to hyperventilation.

Scared? Jean was definitely. Angry? Absolutely.

But it was the confusion, the inability to add up and make sense of the way his reality was behaving around him that made him whirl to the desk beside him and grab a black Sharpie with unsteady fingers.

Ripping the cap off with his teeth, overwhelmed by the absolute _lunacy_ of the situation and irritation of confusion, he places the marker to the wall. 

 

> Leave me alone!

 

He writes and angrily slashes a line beneath the words, his breaths loud and whistling through the cap still between his teeth.

He steps back, staring at the words.

He almost has time for his heart to slow, for common sense to start creeping back in, to begin to think of how stupid that was... before the words sink into the wall and vanish.

Jean stares.

Fear blossoms in his stomach like ice crystals. The itching prick of adrenaline starts creeping outwards to his limbs, his hands going cold.

This is impossible.

Jean doesn't believe in things like ghosts or the paranormal or even life after death.

This is _impossible._

But the paint that comes seeping through the wall a moment later, bright and wet and dizzying, is as real as anything he's ever seen.

 

> _Hello?_

 

The wall reads.

 

> _Is someone there?_

 

Jean's sprinted out onto the landing and down the stairs before the first "H" starts dripping.

 

 

 

Jean doesn't tell his mom.

The day passes in a blur and he sits in his bed, staring at the wall for hours that evening. The shadows gradually creep further along his bedroom floor and springtime sounds of frogs chirping start up as night falls.

His eyelids start drooping, though, after only managing to snag a handful of hours of sleep last night. He tries to fight against the periodic downward drifting of his head and the tired blurring of his vision.

Jerking his head upwards seemingly for the hundredth time, he catches the message just as it fades. 

 

> _Is anyone there?_

 

Leaping off the bed, Jean races to the wall to grab his Sharpie off the desk. Hastily uncapping it, trying desperately to keep his fingers steady, he manages to shakily scrawl back onto the wall.

 

> Who's there?

 

The reply comes after a heart-pounding pause.

 

> _My name's Marco_

 

"Marco..." Jean whispers to himself and it's the strangest thing.

Like the sensation of searching for a word on the tip of your tongue when someone finally provides it and you can't believe ever couldn't place it. That this word that held such important meaning had ever been lost to you.

But another message replaces the one that had faded away moments before.

 

> _Sorry to ask but are you what keeps making my paint disappear?_

 

Jean stares at the words, his brow furrowing, before pressing the marker back to the wall. 

 

> No? It does the same thing for me

 

 

> _For you?_

 

Jean chews his lip, taking in a deep, steadying breath. Even if this is all _completely_ insane, he's damn well going to figure out what's going on here. 

>  
> 
> On my wall
> 
> ~~The paint~~ Your paint I guess keeps showing up on my wall

 

 

> _Your wall?_

 

 

> Everyone seems to think this house is haunted because paint just shows up on the wall

 

 

> _Everyone thinks I'm crazy because I say the wall sucks up my paint_

  

 

> Seems to ends up here I guess. Scared the hell out of me

 

 

> _I'm sorry if my paint scared you_

 

Jean frowns at the words.

 

> _And where is "here" for you?_

 

He's got too many questions of his own to be bothered with answering any so he scribbles back something else.

>  
> 
> Are you a ghost?

 

 

> _No_
> 
> _I thought you were_

 

 

> Why do you paint on the walls? And what's with all the weird cryptic messages?

 

There's a longer pause this time.  

>  
> 
> _It was poetry_

 

Jean raises an eyebrow. What kind of guy paints _poetry_ on the wall of his room?

But another message comes through before he can reply.  

>  
> 
> _When I figured out it wouldn't stay I ~~wanted to~~ ~~thought I~~_
> 
>  
> 
> _I ended up just painting lines from some of my favorite poems into the wall_

 

 

> Why?

  

 

> _I don't know_
> 
> _...who are you?_

 

Jean runs his tongue along the front of his teeth, tip of the Sharpie hovering uncertainly above the surface of the wall.

 

> I'm Jean

 

 

> _Nice to meet you Jean_

 

 

> So

 

He pauses for so long trying to figure out what to say next that the word fades into the wall before he can finish.

 

 

> _What?_

 

 

> So you're not a ghost?
> 
> People in the town here say someone died in this house and that's why the words show up

 

 

> _Not that I know of_
> 
> _And what town?_

 

Jean hesitates.

 

> It's called Rose

 

The reply comes almost before the last traces of Jean's Sharpie have finished fading.

 

> _I live in a town called Rose_

 

Jean stares. 

 

> _But it has to be a different one_
> 
> _I would remember hearing about a haunted house and paint like this_

 

 

> Yeah makes sense

 

 

> _Maybe that's what weird thing is connecting our walls?_

 

 

> You believe in all that BS? Magic and ghosts and crap?

 

 

> _Maybe_

  

 

> It's some horror movie shit if you ask me
> 
> Looked like I was in It for a minute

  

 

> _It?_

  

 

> The Stephen King book

 

 

> _The guy that wrote Carrie?_

 

 

> Yeah

 

 

> _~~But it~~ Carrie's his first book right?_

 

Jean raises an eyebrow.

 

> I think so

 

 

> _But Carrie just came out a few months ago_

 

He stares at the words until they fade. 

>  
> 
> _Jean are you still there?_

  

 

> What year is it Marco?

 

 

> _1973_

 

Ice starts to spread in the pit of Jean's stomach.

 

> _Why?_

 

 

 

It's a Sunday morning but Jean is downstairs at the kitchen table reading through each and every paper his mother had left in a neat stack on the corner of the kitchen table.

His mug of coffee sits untouched on the table beside him, unappetizing with the growing swirl of nausea in his gut.

_Marco Antonio Bodt, born to parents Loretta and Mariano Bodt on June 16th 1955, passed away unexpectedly in his home on Trost Avenue on March 25th 1973 at age seventeen. He was well loved by his friends and classmates at Central Rose High School where he was an honor student and active member of the student government. An exceptional student, his recent application to Cornell University had been accepted. As well as participation in student organizations, Marco was a frequent volunteer at the Old Wall Animal Shelter and tutored underprivileged elementary school students in the nearby town of Shinganshina. His life was cut tragically short by..._

Jean tries to read the entire obituary. He really does. But the lump in his throat growing every more painful with every line he read made it impossible.

Marco had been buried on March 27th, 1973 in the graveyard behind the church that's on Jean's route to school in the mornings.

He feels sick, suddenly, realizing every school day for weeks now he's walked past the long dead corpse of the boy he'd talked to last night.

His hand is clamped over his mouth before he realizes there's nausea surging through him. Jean squeezes his eyes shut and breathes deeply through his nose until it subsides.

This is impossible.

He's _talked_ to Marco. Well, not talked, exactly, but communicated with him. Not his ghost. He had talked to Marco while he was alive. Through some crazy strange magical, haunted wall for some reason.

He's essentially penpals with someone living in 1973. Someone dead.

Someone who doesn't know they died with most of their life yet ahead of them.

Jean doesn't know why the well of aching sadness that yawns to life in his chest feels like an old, familiar pain―like the twinge of a long healed broken bone when it rains―and doesn't want to.

 

When Marie comes back from her morning run with the rays of early morning sun spilling in through the windows, there's nothing in the kitchen but the mess of scattered papers and a mug of coffee beside them, cold and untouched.

 

 

 

 

> So why did you start painting on walls in the first place?

 

It's two AM and Jean is back in front of the far wall of his bedroom, swiveling idly in his desk chair while chewing on the cap of his Sharpie.

His walk to school has gained five minutes both ways because Jean can't bring himself to walk past the church anymore.

 

> _I like words I like quotes so I like putting my favorites up where I can see them all the time_

 

 

> But poetry?

 

 

> _Don't knock poetry I'm gonna be an english teacher when I grow up_

 

Swallowing thickly, Jean has to force himself lift the marker back the wall.

 

> Yeah?

 

 

> _Yep_
> 
> _What about you?_

 

 

> What about me?

  

 

> _I'm still not convinced you're not a ghost in my wall_
> 
> _But assuming you are real in some other Rose out there what do you wanna be?_

 

Jean runs a hand through his hair and watches the words fade. He starts to write again but finds the Sharpie running out of ink.

This isn't the first time. He tosses the dead marker into the empty coffee can on his desk along with the handful of spent others before ripping open the drawer by his knee to grab a fresh one. 

 

> Haven't decided yet

 

 

> _You'll figure it out you have lots of time_

 

Jean tries to ignore the way it feels like his heart clenches in his chest. 

>  
> 
> You don't even know how old I am

  

 

> _You definitely talk like a preteen_

 

Scoffing at the jab, Jean scribbles a hasty reply. 

 

> I'm 16 thank you very much

  

 

> _I'm 17 so I've got you beat_

 

 

> Barely

 

 

> _And I'll be 18 in a few months so I got you way beat_

 

"A few months?" Jean repeats aloud. Marco had died on March 25th at seventeen years old. He'd never lived to see his eighteenth birthday.

Won't ever.

Realization creeps over Jean like a paralyzing fog. He'd never considered that even though the years were different, Marco's days ran parallel to his.

The reality dawns on Jean so quickly that the wave of nausea, of heart-wrenchingly terrible and inexplicably familiar grief, nearly knocks him out of his seat.

 

> _Jean?_

 

Because he's talking to Marco _right now_ , alive and well and his living his life on the other side of that wall and of stretching decades and he has no _fucking_ idea.

 

> _Is something wrong?_

 

No idea that Jean is choking back sobs in an empty bedroom on the 18th of March and trembling with a splintering, quaking grief he doesn't understand.

 

 

  
"Pumpkin, are you all right?" Marie asks.

It's March 20th and Jean has barely slept in days.

He talks to Marco for _hours_ every night. Back and forth, paint and marker fading in and out as the angles of the moonlight slowly arc across Jean's bedroom floor.

"'m fine." He mumbles.

"You look tired as all get-out." She accuses, grabbing his face between her hands and tilting side to side so she can examine. "Look at these bags."

"I'm fine, Mom."

"Are you having trouble settling in at school? You said you wanted to join a sports team or something when you got here. To make friends and things."

"Changed my mind."

"I'm just worried about you, Jean." Marie sighs.

"You're my mom, that's kinda your job." Jean huffs a short laugh. Marie just continues to study him with that concerned twist to the corners of her mouth.

"Is it about the bedroom upstairs?" She asks hesitantly.

"No." Jean can't help but say it a bit too sharply, too quickly and his mother's eyes widen. He lets out a breath and convinces his shoulders to relax from their hunch. "Think I'm just having a bad week is all."

 

 

 

 

> _You know what's strange?_

 

 

> What?

 

 

> _I've only talked to you through writing on my bedroom wall but I_

 

Jean assumes Marco took too long to finish the thought and the words decided to go ahead and come through. He waits for the rest of the message. 

 

> _I feel like I know you_

 

Closing his eyes he licks his lips and lets out a breath.

Nothing about any of this with Marco makes sense.

Not the impossible wall or the sending messages through time or the strange way Marco's name sits on his tongue when he says it.

Or the fact that when he reads the words Marco sends him through the wall in, in his mind he hears them in a voice that isn't his own.

Or the way the picture in the newspaper was too blurry and faded for the amount of detail required to tell that Marco had freckles, but he somehow knows anyway.

Or the way Marco blissfully living his life on the other side of this _damned_ wall with no idea that Jean is watching his time tick away drives a knife into Jean's gut in a way he can't place.

Or the way it smells like ashes sometimes when he cries.

 

> Yeah?

  

 

> _Sorry that's a weird thing to say_

 

 

> No I get it's weird but I understand

 

There's a moment of empty wall before the reply comes.

>  
> 
> _Do you think there's a reason we can talk to each other through the wall?  
>  _

  

 

> Maybe maybe not?
> 
> Why?

 

 

> _Dunno just had a feeling_

 

 

  
It's March 22nd and Jean's convinced his mother he's come down with a cold because the thought of going to school feeling like he's slowly being cracked in two is unbearable.

He sleeps most of the daytime hours and crawls over to his desk in the evenings and picks up the newest Sharpie from his pile.

With the evaporation of his old schedule and the inexplicable nature of the whole situation, his life feels like descending increasingly deeper into a dream.

 

> _The poem?_

 

 

> You said you were writing lines from a poem

  

 

> _Just before you started writing back?_

 

  

> Yeah
> 
> What poem was it?

 

 

> _Death is Nothing At All by Henry-Scott Holland_

 

 

> Cheery

 

 

> _It's about how when people pass away they're really still there with you_
> 
> _And that you'll see them again so you shouldn't be sad about it_

 

 

> Sounds like your kinda thing since you're an optimist

  

 

> _How would you know I'm an optimist?_

 

The tip of the marker pauses over the smooth surface of wall when Jean realizes he has no idea where that idea came from - so strong and familiar and certain.

 

> _You're right, though_

 

Smiles, as though from some barely remembered dream slide elusively through his consciousness like water through fingers.

 

 

> _I actually found it in a book of poems up in the attic_
> 
> _One of the previous owners must have left it there_

  

 

> What's your favorite part?

 

 

> _What?_

  

 

> Of the poem

  

 

> _Hold on let me grab the book_

 

Jean waits, his heart feeling like a weight sinking slowly in his chest, for Marco to return.

 

> _"Everything remains exactly as it was._
> 
> _I am I, and you are you,_
> 
> _and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged._
> 
> _Whatever we were to each other, that we are still."_

 

There's something in the back of Jean's mind that flickers like the speckled green flash of trees zipping quickly by. 

 

> Why do you like it?

  

 

> _I don't know actually_
> 
> _~~Do you believ~~ Do you ever get that feeling? Like nostalgia but for something you can't place or don't remember?_

 

Jean doesn't remember when he started crying. 

 

> Yeah

 

 

> _That's what it makes me feel_

 

"Marco..." Jean whispers to himself, just to feel it rolling over his tongue and lips, to hear it spoken out loud. 

 

> _You know its weird_
> 
> _This book I found in the attic?_
> 
> _It had a little handwritten note someone scribbled in at the end of that poem_

  

 

> What did it say?

 

 

> _"I don't understand but I think I loved you once."_

 

Slipping. The feeling of sliding and twisting and everything zipping by. Jean's breath is halted and stuttered. 

 

> _Jesus I really do think this house is haunted sometimes_

 

 

> Why's that?

 

The letters are wobbly where Jean can't force his hand to stop shaking.

 

> _Could've sworn I just heard someone crying_

 

 

 

By the evening of March 24th Jean knows "Death is Nothing At All" by heart.

He's sitting outside on the back porch as the sunsets, two thirds of the way through filling up the spiral-bound notebook in his lap. Over and over and over.

Reaching the end of the poem, he flips to the next page and begins again with the title and author and on it goes.

He doesn't know what obsessive madness compels him to keep writing, keep marking down the words, keep etching the ideas of reunion and nearby rooms and hope into existence.

"Jean?" Jean hears Marie call his name, then the clattering slide of the glass door sliding open. "Oh, there you are, pumpkin. Good to see you outside. Feeling a little better?"

"Getting there." Jean manages, stilling his pen with an effort.

"I'm so happy to hear it." Marie comes to plant a kiss on the top of his head. "Whatchya writing there?"

"It's a poem. A friend of mine really likes it."

Marie gives him a smile he doesn't think he fully understands and another quick kiss on the forehead before turning back towards the door.

"Come in before it gets dark, yeah?"

"Sure."

 

 

  
Jean is crying so hard he can barely breathe that night as he watches Marco's messages fade in through the wall. 

 

> _Jean? Are you there? I need to talk to you_

 

"I'm sorry..." 

 

> _Please be there? I feel so off lately I don't know how to explain it_

 

"I'm sorry..."

 

> _Are you there, Jean? I keep saying your name and I don't know why_

 

"I'm sorry..."

 

> _I keep having these dreams where I feel so scared it hurts and I think I smell smoke_

 

"I'm sorry..." 

 

> _Jean none of this makes sense what's going on?_

 

"I'm sorry..." 

 

> _I'm sorry_
> 
> _I hope you're okay since you're not talking_

 

"I'm sorry..." 

 

> _Maybe you really were a ghost and you finally passed over_
> 
> _If so I hope you're at peace_
> 
> _I'm gonna miss you_

 

 

  
The night of March 25th Jean stays up all night watching the unchanging smoothness of his bedroom wall.

Nothing comes through.

No paint, no words.

No Marco.

Jean closes his eyes and writes every insane half-delirious image that fills his mind into the wall as he whispers Marco's name into the empty darkness of his bedroom.

By the time the sunrise spills through his window, Jean knows which muscles he uses to write the words "why," and "miss," and "love" because they _ache_.

 

 

 

On June 18th, Jean unlatches the fence behind the church with a soft squeak and starts walking the rows of grave markers. He scans each and everyone one, his mouth growing drier with each successive row he passes with no sight of the name he's looking for.

It's towards the right edge of the graveyard when he finally spots it, nondescript and silent in the summer sun.

 

 _Marco Antonio Bodt_  
_June 18, 1995 - March 25th, 1973_  
_Beloved son_

 _Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?_  
_I am but waiting for you, for an interval,_  
_somewhere very near,_  
_just round the corner._

_-Henry Scott Holland_

 

Jean knees down beside the grave, lays the flowers at the base and fishes a fresh Sharpie from his pocket.

He carries Sharpies in all his pockets but hasn't been able to uncap one since March.

He stares at it for a moment, lying innocently against his palm, before he uncaps it and presses it to the porous stone at the very bottom edge of the tombstone.

Each letter needs to be gone over twice for it to take, and besides that he has to pause several times to steady his hand or wipe the tears clouding his vision but eventually he retracts his arm and caps the Sharpie once more.

He reads over the words once, twice more, then glances down to the marker in his hand.

On some foreign impulse, like muscle memory formed in some faraway dream, Jean clasps the marker tightly and brings it up to his lips, closing his eyes.

He presses it there for a moment, letting out a shuddering breath, before placing it down beside the gravestone with the flowers.

Swallowing hard, Jean shakily hauls himself to his feet and brushes stray grass off his jeans.

"You're just in the next room, right?" The words are a cracked whisper. "Just around the corner?"

He turns to walk back toward the main road, away from the old grave with its new flowers and barely-used marker and the words written in a blocky hand onto the base.

 

> _I miss you. So much._
> 
> _I don't understand but I think I loved you once_

**Author's Note:**

> [fanfic/podfic blog](http://zoe-bug.tumblr.com/) | [personal](http://xiexiecaptain.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/xiexiecaptain)


End file.
